"We need something like Facebook, but just not Facebook." If you heard that from your client, or thought that yourself, PPnet might be for you.

PPNet is a middleware that can be used to create a social network, either temporarily or permanently for a group of users. It provides the functionality of social interactions in the digital world (like posting status messages and images) apart from the major, proprietary social networks (like Facebook). It is particularly useful for intra- or extranet based social networks since users maintain the sovereignty about their own data.

Watch this video to see what it can do:

This project is partly funded by the Europian Union through the FI-CONTENT2 project which is part of FI-PPP (It is called 'Social Network Enabler' there . We chose another name here on Github, because most people are not aware of the FI-PPP lingo).

Disclaimer: it was successfully tested in the Cologne Carnival with poor network connectivity in a small-scale experiment with less than hundred people. So, yes it works. But no, it's not ready yet. If you need something bigger, go for http://pump.io/ for the moment (but this is alpha).

PPnet is mainly developed by Tobias Rotter (@tobiasrotter) and Philipp Reinking (@PhilReinking); project lead is Dirk Krause (@dirkk0).

PPnet is built as a single page application (SPA) in the JavaScript framework AngularJS, and uses a PouchDB/CouchDB combination for data synchronisation. The nice thing about this architecture is that you only need a CouchDB as a server side component (plus a simple HTTP Server) and that it works in online/offline mode.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of installing development tools you can test PPnet by following these steps:

• simply download the zip file of this repository,
• navigate to the www directory (cd www)
• start a web server right there (python -m SimpleHTTPServer or python3 -m http.server ) If you navigate to http://localhost:8000 you should see PPnet with that latest entries of our test database.

To connect to your own database, you only need to change the remoteentry in the config file to a running, CORS enabled CouchDB.

Changing this is the minimum thing you want to do to create your own database for your own social network. You will want to change the other entries too, to change the name of the application, the default location and so forth.

These steps project lead you to the required steps to build the www folder that contains the web application.

• Node.js (including NPM)
• Bower ('npm install -g bower')

• Install Ruby (for Windows: http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/)
• Install Compass Gem: gem install compass

• Checkout PPnet 2.0 Repository and "cd" into ppnet folder

git clone https://github.com/pixelpark/ppnet
cd ppnet

• Install all required NPM Packages

npm install

• Install all Bower dependencies

bower install

• Run Gulp

npm run gulp

We use gulp for building an optimized version of the app-folder. The output is saved to the www-folder.

npm run build

Then phonegap is able to run its own build task:

phonegap build android

note: most of the information below is still working. we are currently in the process of documenting the 2.x version

There are just two components needed to get your own social network up and running:

• a CouchDB database server (Version 1.3+)
• a simple webserver with the root directory pointing to the 'www' directory in this Git.

The application uses a PouchDB/CouchDB replication to handle offline/online scenarios.

First, you need to install it (this is not mandatory, but additionally you might want to install these enhancements. Once you did that, you can access the administration interface on http://yourip.com:5984 where you need to enable CORS.

You do that by editing these values:

httpd enable_cors  true
cors credentials   true	
headers            accept, authorization, content-type, origin, Cookie	
methods            GET, PUT, POST, HEAD, DELETE	
origins            *

The adminstration interface looks like this

If your CouchDB is not on a local machine, you need to edit the configfile (usually at /usr/local/etc/couchdb) and edit this line:

[httpd]
bind_address = 0.0.0.0

To connect the web app to your own database, you only need to change the remoteentry in config file located in the www-folder.

Once you did that, you are good to go.

The easiest way to do this is to

• clone or unzip this repository
• cd to the 'www' directory
• enter python -m SimpleHTTPServer (if your on Python 2.*) or python3 -m http.server for python3.

Then open a Chrome or a Firefox browser and browse to http://yourip.com:8000 and you should see the login screen:

You can enter any name and any number and you are logged in.

The viewport to the map view is hardcoded to some place in Cologne. You can change the Map-Viewport by changing the loadMapView-Function in the ViewController (ppmet/www/js/controller/view_controller.js - Lines 391-400).

    394: map = L.map('map').setView([50.9188, 6.9242], 15);

Additionally, you can enjoy the benefits of having a native app, kudos to the Phonegap / Cordova project.

Important: since the app needs Chromium as the default engine, only KitKat (Android 4.4.2) is supported. If someone knows how to install Chromium with phonegap, give as a holler. You can, however, also use the Chrome browser on any Android.

To install Phonegap locally on a machine read the next chapter. Alternatively you can also try a service like http://build.phonegap.com or http://www.telerik.com/appbuilder, but your mileage may vary.

If you want to set up the software in its own directory, you can clone the git repository, so:

$ git clone https://github.com/pixelpark/ppnet
$ cd ppnet

Add Android as a platform to cordova (I don't think you need to do that?):

$ cordova platform add android

Add Plugins

$ phonegap plugin add org.apache.cordova.device-orientation
$ phonegap plugin add org.apache.cordova.file
$ phonegap plugin add org.apache.cordova.file-transfer
$ phonegap plugin add org.apache.cordova.device
$ phonegap plugin add org.apache.cordova.camera
$ phonegap plugin add org.apache.cordova.statusbar
$ phonegap plugin add https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/cordova-plugin-geolocation.git

Build Android APK

$ phonegap build android

OR

Build Android APK and deploy to device

$ phonegap run android

• NodeJS
• Java
• Ant
• Android SDK
• Phonegap

• Install NodeJs http://nodejs.org/

• Install JDK (JRE is not sufficient) http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html (jdk-7u51-windows-x64.exe for win7/64bit)

• Create the environment variable JAVA_HOME and set it to your JDK directory. This should look similar to: "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_51"

• Add %JAVA_HOME%\bin to the environment variable PATH.

If everything worked out you can type java -version in a terminal and it should return the version number without errors.

• Install ANT http://ant.apache.org/manual/install.html (Kudos to Tobias Seckinger)

• Move the content of the zip file to c:\ant.

• Add c:\ant\bin to the environment variable PATH:

• Create the environment variable ANT_HOME and set it to C:\ant.

• Create the environment variable ANT_OPTS and set it to -Xmx256M.

If everything worked out you can type ant -version in a terminal and it should return the version number without errors.

• Install Android SDK http://developer.android.com/sdk/

• Move the installation to C:\android.

• Create the environment variable ANDROID_HOME and set it to c:\android\sdk.

If everything worked out you can type android -h in a terminal and it should return the help text without errors.

On Ubuntu 12.04 this should be:

#install latest node
sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --yes nodejs
 
# java
sudo apt-get -y install openjdk-7-jdk
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64
export PATH=${PATH}:${JAVA_HOME}/bin
 
# ant
sudo apt-get --yes install ant
 
# Android SDK
wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r20-linux.tgz
tar -xvzf android-sdk_r20-linux.tgz
 
export PATH=${PATH}:~/android-sdk-linux/tools
export PATH=${PATH}:~/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools
 
sudo apt-get -y install expect
 
# install packages, for reference see:
#   android list sdk --all
 
# install Platform-tools (2)
expect -c '
set timeout -1   ;
spawn android update sdk -u -a -t 2; 
expect { 
    "Do you accept the license" { exp_send "y\r" ; exp_continue }
    eof
}
'
 
# install Tools (1)
expect -c '
set timeout -1   ;
spawn android update sdk -u -a -t 1; 
expect { 
    "Do you accept the license" { exp_send "y\r" ; exp_continue }
    eof
}
'
 
# install Build-tools (3)
expect -c '
set timeout -1   ;
spawn android update sdk -u -a -t 3; 
expect { 
    "Do you accept the license" { exp_send "y\r" ; exp_continue }
    eof
}
'
 
# install 4.4.2 (10) a.k.a. KitKat
expect -c '
set timeout -1   ;
spawn android update sdk -u -a -t 12; 
expect { 
    "Do you accept the license" { exp_send "y\r" ; exp_continue }
    eof
}
'
 
# install 32-bit dependencies
# http://sixarm.com/about/ubuntu-apt-get-install-ia32-for-32-bit-on-64-bit.html
sudo apt-get install -y lib32gcc1 libc6-i386 lib32z1 lib32stdc++6
sudo apt-get install -y lib32ncurses5 lib32gomp1 lib32z1-dev lib32bz2-dev
sudo apt-get install -y g++-multilib
 
# phonegap
sudo npm install -g phonegap
 
sudo apt-get -y install git

Initial Release.

• Working system.
• Three views.
• Offline Support.

Second Release.

• Bower and npm support
• refactored, cleaner code base